Room 304

For all of the intensity, grief, betrayal, and sexual catharsis in this Danish drama, there is precious little reason to feel invested in anyone’s particular story. Multiple strands run through a complex tale taking place in an unnamed Copenhagen hotel, uniting various characters—many of them strangers to one another—in overlapping destinies. Screenwriter Kim Fupz Aakeson and director Birgitte Staermose play with non-linear timelines and a jumble of nationalities and languages to lay out the sordid events that transpire over a single day. A gunshot starts the narrative, immediately leading back to a series of actions preceding the pistol fire: the hotel manager is having an affair with his married assistant; a Spanish stewardess seeks out a disposable sexual partner in the lobby bar and ends up with a selfish jerk; a gun-wielding dishwasher, out to avenge the 1990s rape of his wife in the former Yugoslavia, confronts her attacker; an unsmiling concierge gets caught in the middle of everything; and a maid becomes collateral damage. Unhappiness pours through every hallway like the blood in The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel, although it all amounts to superficial ironies since every action by one person merely dovetails—without a resonating point—with that of another. If something more had been made of the possibilities in the script (perhaps dealing with the wide array of class and privilege represented by the hodgepodge of characters), there might have been more to this connect-the-random-dots would-be thriller. Optional. (T. Keogh)